by Edward
29 November 2009 18:04
We are almost at the end of 2009, and this year there have been some interesting things happening in the world of .Net and Microsoft. There was the release of Silverlight 3, Internet Explorer 8, updates to the AJAX library and toolkit, and just over a month ago we got Windows 7.
I thought I would point out a few new .Net technologies to look out for next year.
- Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.Net 4.0: Microsoft already released beta versions of Visual Studio 2010 that will be running the ASP.Net framework 4.0. They aim to release the newest edition of Visual Studio and ASP.Net 4.0 on 22 March 2010.
- MVC Framework: The first version of this framework has been released in March 2009. Currently MVC 2.0 Beta is available for download. Microsoft has made several changes to this framework since the first release. You should find the latest version available for download in the first half of 2010.
- JQuery: It has taken Microsoft a while to wake up, but it is nice to know that JQuery is being adopted by Visual Studio. JQuery is a Javascript library that has a lot of neat tools in it's bag. It is very helpful for taking care of mundane tasks like "get that div" or "set that text box value." It also has a great set of methods for dealing with AJAX.
- WCF, WF and WPF: ASP.Net is a maturing framework that will continue to move forward, with or without you. The best advice I have is to get on the wagon. Tools and accompanying frameworks are maturing in line, but behind, the .NET framework - your applications should be as well. The earlier you start, the better. WCF, or known as Windows Communication Framework, is used to abstract the "plumbing" of your application. It can save you hours and hours of coding.
- Silverlight 4.0: Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework that provides functionalities similar to those in Adobe Flash, integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. Silverlight 4.0 Beta has been released last month, so do not be surprised to see the latest version available before June 2010.